SFL Celebrates Ten Years with Doosan Babcock at Drax Power Station

SFL Mobile Radio is proud to celebrate its tenth year supplying radio equipment for the outage works at Drax Power Station which is carried out by our client Doosan Babcock.

For a six month shutdown period each year, SFL provides the communications for Doosan Babcock while they carry out essential maintenance work to western Europe’s largest power station.

With a generating capacity of just under 4,000 megawatts Drax Power Station, which is currently being transformed into a predominantly biomass-fuelled generator through burning sustainable biomass in place of coal, provides around 7-8 per cent of the United Kingdom’s total electricity supply.

To undertake the large scale maintenance work, SFL provides a digital radio network utilising a Motorola DMR platform, including four digital repeaters, a sophisticated antenna system, approximately 120 Motorola DP4400 and ten DP4600 management hand portables.

Each portable is supplied with a high capacity Impres battery and charger system offering optimum in battery performance and maintenance when paired with the Impres charging system. Battery life is crucial for the long shifts carried out on the outage project and in order to maintain logistics, interoperability between work groups and health and safety in the dangerous power station environment.

Doosan Babcock principal commercial controller Andy Hunter said: “Doosan have been more than satisfied with the service and commitment received from SFL over these past 10 years while supporting the Drax site.

“The response to any queries or issues has been swift and dealt with in a professional manner which is a very important factor to Doosan during very demanding and ever changing Outages and Projects. We look forward to the next 10 years.”

The radio system offers crystal clear communications between workers over several channels. Each channel is allocated to specific teams working on the project including engineers, scaffolders, cleaning services, winching teams and stores and logistics. Channels are completely interchangeable in order to ensure the upmost efficiency is gained through crucial communications.

Radios are equipped with a lone worker timer that automatically activates a pre-alarm every 30 minutes – if the worker does not react to the alarm then an alert is sent to the relevant manager and a channel is opened to the radio.

In addition, the emergency button on the top of the handset is programmed to alert other radio users and let them know who is in potential distress. The radios’ display provides incoming caller ID and indicates when the emergency channel has been opened so workers and managers know immediately when a call is potentially serious.

The radio system is utilised 24 hours a day, seven days a week due to important targets set out by the power station. SFL offers a full maintenance package on equipment hired to ensure total sustainability throughout the rental period – if there is any problem which can’t be rectified over the phone we will come on site to address it.

SFL has also provided many other successful mobile radio solutions throughout the UK for Doosan Babcock at power stations such as Eggborough, Stanlow, Ironbridge, Ferrybridge and more recently for the conversion of Lynemouth Power Station to biomass.

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